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Saturday, October 23, 2010

HEY WHY ARENT U LEARNING

t
there is so much shit to know in the world you'll never learn it all. And there's so much shit you wish you knew in the world you'll never know as much as you should.
That shouldn't stop you from trying, though. There's a lot of quality material available for free to help you.

Open Academic Courses
In the last few years, a lot of renowned Universities have started recording introductory courses for listening or viewing online for free. This isfucking awesome. Think about it for a minute; for hundreds of years courses at institutions like Yale were restricted to a small number of enrolled students and those who had the initiative to audit them. Now, access to some of the best educational material in the world is available for free to anyone who wants it. The course selection offered by these institutions is admittedly small, but when you're getting them for free you can't complain. Almost all of these courses are available on iTunes as well (some are now only on iTunes) listed by their respective institution
Yale - http://oyc.yale.edu/
Harvard - http://www.extension.harvard.edu/courses/
MIT - http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
Columbia - http://itunes.columbia.edu/
Stanford - http://itunes.stanford.edu/
Princeton - http://hulk03.princeton.edu:8080/WebMedia/lectures/
Boston College - http://frontrow.bc.edu/programs/
UC Berkeley - http://webcast.berkeley.edu/
UC Irvine - http://ocw.uci.edu/
Carnegie Mellon - http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
Tufts - http://ocw.tufts.edu/
Michigan - http://open.umich.edu/
Notre Dame - http://ocw.nd.edu/


Specific Course Material
Here are some Universities which have course material on a particular area of study.
Cornell / Quantum Physics - http://bethe.cornell.edu/
Johns Hopkins / Public Health - http://ocw.jhsph.edu/topics.cfm
University of Washington / Computer Science - http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/course-webs.html
Indiana Purdue (IUPUI) / Computer Science - http://wally.cs.iupui.edu/wallyindex.html
Duke University / Law http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/lectures/
Harvard / Medicine http://mycourses.med.harvard.edu/public/
Oxford / Mathematics - http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/opencourseware/


Lectures, Talks, Etc
Some communities specialize in recording lectures on a plethora of topics; unlike open courses, the lectures don't necessarily coalesce around a common theme. They often attract damn good writers, thinkers, and speakers who represent the absolute pinnacle of their respective fields. FORA.tv records lectures from Nobel laureates, Supreme Court justices, and just about anyone else you can imagine. TED has become ubiquitous in the past few years for their TED Conferences, where they attract awesome speakers and condense good talks to less than twenty minutes. Like Open Courses, they can be downloaded on iTunes or streamed from their respective sites.
FORA.tv - http://www.fora.tv/
TED - http://www.ted.com


Open Courseware Consortium & Academic Earth
A few of the Universities featured above (but not all) are members of the Open Courseware Consortium, which aggregates the course listings of them into one site to allow for easier searching. Exercise discretion; the OCC contains good Universities and really shitty ones, so I'm just listing it to expedite searching of particular topics you might be interested in.
Academic Earth was conceived as a lecture streaming site akin to Hulu with the goal of centralizing lecture videos. While a noble concept, a lot of Universities don't like giving up their lecture videos to a foreign site that easily and it's use is pretty limited because of it. It's still a great resource with a substantial amount of material and thus a good resource for searching a lot of course offerings for a specific topic (like the Consortium above), but the role it plays is pretty limited.
Open Courseware Consortium - http://www.ocwconsortium.org
Academic Earth - http://www.academicearth.com


Other Material
I've heard nothing but good about Khan Academy - a not-for-profit which has videos on econ, math, and science. If you're interested and some of the above material isn't helping you, check them out.
Khan Academy - http://www.khanacademy.org/


What should I start out with?
Look around. Find something that interests you. Yale's open coursework is especially well-done, though that's just my opinion - you're likely to find good courses anywhere. Spend ten minutes looking; as hackneyed as it sounds whatever piques your interest is likely the best option.

Alright, I watched/listened to some. What now?
Talk about it. Post your thoughts on what you watched, recommend it or shit on it for others in the topic...knowledge begets knowledge.



Well my goal is to listen to a couple of these on my ipod over the past few months.

moochingfunkybuttmagnetfag


Vicarious

Credulous at best, your desire to believe in angels in the hearts of men.
Pull your head on out your hippy haze and give a listen.
Shouldn't have to say it all again.
The universe is hostile. so Impersonal. devour to survive.
So it is. So it's always been. - Maynard James Keenan

Friday, October 22, 2010

you are both fat tubs of lard, the idea of you two having sex disgusts me

Japanese girls are definitely butter faces. Prob has something to do with way China having way more people and having a bit of genetic variation compared to stagnant nippon

In any case, I think asian chicks get a bad wrap when in reality alot of heavy make up girls regardless of race look fugly. Makeup fucks their face over and gives em acne. There asian fob chicks on campus that are super hot and I can tell that they're not wearing makeup.

That being said, there's way too much plastic surgery and makeup magic going on throughout the world right now that's making fugly ass chicks into believably attractive ones. This needs to be stopped, I wanna fap to all natural girls.

I am an intelligent racist pedophile libertarian who only listens to metal.
I also hate: feminists, anybody who has sex, and anyone without a sig
Some girls of every ethnicity and nationality are hot.

Beautiful people can be found in every race, religion, class, and creed.

honestly, I thought American TV was fucking stupid

then I got introduced to Asian TV



how can it be even worse

even worse?!




I think Filipino TV is the worst of all, though

because it's like Mexican TV but there's no chicks shaking it like unstable fusion reactors

It's the youth, man.

Asia has this thing where their women have to look real young.

You don't... normally get the whole, full-grown, demure, mature thing, and that's a shame.


Women should have dignity, not, uh... run around the park giggling.


my fucking fishes die everytime i change the water.
this is fucked up shit.
i really can't keep fishes. In fact I don't want to.
I feel so helpess watching them floating upside down and i try and poke them just to get them to move, all they do is move for a bit then they die. It's fucked i swear, i feel so helpless. Why do they have to die.
WHY? WHY MUST I KEEP THEM.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Sociologist Parker Benth Publishes WoW Class Case Study

NOTE: This post is extremely interesting. I applaud Benth for his perseverance in publishing this case study. The Nov 2010 Vol 18 PAJS is available from online sites such as EBSCOHost for 79.99. 

A Sociologist named Parker Benth has published a case study on World of Warcraft players and their classes in the November 2010 issue of the Public Access Journal of Social Science. Paired with articles on the controversies of library censorship and issues with CYWSHCN (Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs), Benth's article is significantly different than the others published in the journal at the same time.
 

PAJS articles go through academic scrutiny before the authors are paid and published. Benth's personal blog (Which was on Wordpress.com but has since been taken down to prepare for his new book) described the rigid process of getting his article published in the academic journal of his choice.
 


Quote Originally Posted by Parker Benth
The task of publishing [your article] is arduous and time-consuming. It's the only thing that you can think about for months, and it's not for the money. You just want to see it get through and get published so people can read and even quote your work.


Benth also expressed a great desire for his article to be re-published and used as a piece of news on MMO news websites. We're happy to announce that MMOwned is the first of any such site to feature Mr. Benth's wonderful case study. 


The study, titled "Socioeconomic Mirror Thesis for World of Warcraft", deals with the ethnic, social, and economic backgrounds of World of Warcraft players on all types of servers, and how their real-world conditions affect their class choice. Benth stated that the pool was of a total of 5,000 players. 200 of those players were interviewed face-to-face, while a larger percentage of them filled out a document on Microsoft Word with their economic history, or did a face-to-face interview over Skype.
 

The results of Benth's study are absolutely staggering. He was able to discern an observable pattern between real-life conditions and class choice in game. His abstract focused extensively on psychological context as well, stating that players with certain mental disabilities are geared towards different classes than people with totally sound minds. Benth's argument is impressively cogent and valid, and his thesis statement is as follows:
 

Quote Originally Posted by Parker Benth
It can be said that there are mirrored aspects of the real world (Earth) within the fictional world (Azeroth). While the differences of these two worlds are many, the similarities manifest themselves in ways that are not immediately understood. Since this is true, it follows that it is possible to associate real-world characteristics with in-game choices.


Benth leaves room to expand on his theory, since his document is less than 10,000 words, not including the associated data. 


ECONOMIC DATA:

With an average of 5,000 players, Benth organized each class from largest to smallest of real-world net worth. He also based much of his data on professions. Classes near the bottom of the list tend to have more blue-collar and factory jobs than classes at the top of the list, for example.
 

1.) Warrior (An average of $89,000+ per year)
 
2.) Hunter
3.) Rogue
4.) Mage
5.) Shaman
6.) Druid
7.) Death Knight
8.) Priest
9.) Warlock
10.) Paladin (An average of <$30,000+ per year)

The question struck Benth, and probably anyone else who read this list. Why do people who have greater incomes pick the Warrior over the Mage, Warlock, Hunter, Shaman, Paladin, or Rogue? Benth makes the following conclusion:
 

Quote Originally Posted by Parker Benth
...[players] with the highest income playing Warriors as their class is not really that surprising. If one wants to get philosophical, a Warrior is a bare-bones class with no magic ability and single-minded purpose. Since people with higher incomes statistically lead happier and longer lives, the desire for playing a class like a Priest who can do miracles, or a Warlock who can wreak irreversible damage to their enemies is less appealing than your average Joe. They don't need to play a fantastical class because they're in a world much unlike the rest of the world, where money can perform as many miracles as a Priest. Notice that the

Quote Originally Posted by Parker Benth
Rogue and Hunter along with the Warrior are at the top of the list of income. These are the three major physical damage (which means damage that is done by weapons and not by magic) classes in the game World of Warcraft. For those not familiar with the game, there are a variety of different "roles" that players must perform in a group to work together. The three previously mentioned classes are all damage dealers and "tanks", or people who absorb damage using their armor. The theorybreaker seems to be the Mage at first, but when you think about it, the Mage is actually quite a bland spell-caster compared to the Warlock or thePriest. Trivial moves such as conjuring bread or water really paint the Mage to be an ordinary guy with magic powers. Paladin being at the bottom of the list also corresponds to the theory. Paladins are perhaps the most fantastical class of World of Warcraft. Their magic can reverse death, protect others from lethal blows, and smite demonic armies with the wave of a claymore. A person who is oppressed by death and restricted by income corresponds with the Paladin class because the Paladin is the savior, the martyr, the hero. They can do things that [we] would never be able to do in [our lives]...


ETHNIC DATA:
 

Benth asked the pool of 5,000 players their ethnic background. They were given a standard US Census form answer sheet for the proceedings. Minorities were scaled in equal ratio with Caucasians to account for popular class choices for minority races.
 

1.) Paladin: Caucasian
 
2.) Warrior: Caucasian
3.) Hunter: Caucasian
4.) Shaman: Caucasian
5.) Priest: Asian/Pacific Islander
6.) Warlock: Caucasian
7.) Death Knight: Asian/Pacific Islander
8.) Mage: African American/Black
9.) Rogue: Hispanic
10.) Druid: Caucasian

Quote Originally Posted by Parker Benth
It is harder to make a conclusive observation from the ethnic data. Men are the majority players in the game, but only by a small percentage. African American men are statistically taught to be pragmatic problem solvers and are encouraged to hide their emotions and doubts to pursue a goal. (117 Rodgers) Because of this cultural tendency, we can conclude partially that African American [people] might see the Mage as a pragmatic class that [solves problems].


Benth was unable to make any other conclusions based upon the economic data.
 

GENDER DATA:

The classic theory of women preferring healing classes does not ring true with Benth's report:
 

1.) Paladin: Male
 
2.) Warrior: Male
3.) Hunter: Female
4.) Shaman: Female
5.) Priest: Male
6.) Warlock: Female
7.) Death Knight: Male
8.) Mage: Male
9.) Rogue: Male
10.) Druid: Female

Quote Originally Posted by Parker Benth
My research grant both required and compelled me to either validate or disprove previous sociological theories of gender and class choice, which are plentiful. The data is more accessible and the study is more wide-encompassing and marketable; there are many ethnicities and classes in the world, but there are only two genders. Past theories have come to many conclusions, but the most popular of them cite that men prefer damage dealing and hybrid classes, and women statistically prefer healers. This is not the case in my pool, because women prefer the
Quote Originally Posted by Parker Benth
Druid, Warlock, Hunter, and Shaman. Two of those are hybrid classes, only two of them can heal, and all of them do damage.


OPINION DATA: POLITICAL ALIGNMENT
 

Benth studied how the American players identified politically. He was interested in understanding how political opinions determine class choice.
 

The pool was given three choices:
 
1.) Democrat
2.) Republican
3.) Independent

1.) Paladin: Republican
 
2.) Warrior: Democrat
3.) Hunter: Democrat
4.) Shaman: Democrat
5.) Priest: Republican
6.) Warlock: Republican
7.) Death Knight: Democrat
8.) Mage: Republican
9.) Rogue: Independent
10.) Druid: Democrat

Parker Benth plans to conclude his WoW Sociological study with a new blog and book. There is no release date set, but Benth plans to release his book by Q2 2011 at the latest.

fuck

IT'S 2.10 AM. AND IM REINSTALLING WOW.
FML,
NEED NEW SOUND CARD CUZ PC FAIL @ SOUND

part 3

i never changed
my core values have always been the same
love, honesty, truth , kindness, compassion, reciprocity
the golden rule
be good for the sake of being good
love for the sake of loving
love because there's too much hate and bad things in this world
life is good, life is meant to be full of love and joy and happiness
intelligence is great
i tmakes you a better person
our ability to think is what makes us who we are
it lets us find truth
be real, be true
im liek the truest person ever
i dont change myself around people
how can you not love that?
do you feel nothing

part 2

what did i do
what i didnt do?
waht do u feel
waht do you want in life
that makes no sense
im dead
i have no soul
it died
there is no god
i've lost all hope in humanity
there is no good in this world
it's nothing but  a sick tiwsted ironic illusion of fake and unobtaibale happiness
i will never be happy again
if i died right now i would be happier
and it'[s sad
because you are a good person
and i dont think anyone could love you as much as i did
seriously
i would rather you have killed me
than told me that
i would have rather you stabbed me in the face and slit my throat
or poisoned me in my sleep
i dont understand
why you dont love me
and i still cant beleive this is real life
will i ever see you again

no reference to her. ( srsly )

please come here and shoot me
or kill me , anyway i don't care
please put me out of my misery
have some decency and be a decent human being
hire someone just kill me
i
dont
care
i don't wat to live
i dont care how painful it is.
Well if you cahnge your mind and i'm still alive i'll always love you.
Please don't do this.
You have NO SOUL
You're a MOCKERY of all that is good.
Your EXISTANCE IS IRONIC
You give HOPE
And then you DESTROY IT.
You're like EVIL'S insult to all that is GOOD.
I give nothing but LOVE
Absolute PURE LOVE
Endless BOUNDLESS LOVE
On a LEVEL beyond COMPREHENSION
And then YOU'RE JUST PURE APATHY.
ok
i'll talk to you later
Sipping magic from a chalice, detached from the distractions.
At last, I can relax, looking past all of the action.
A fraction or a fragment of me, actually is present.
The rest of me is heavenly, the seventh house’s zenith.

Monday, October 18, 2010

MC

It's that time of the year once again! Dread going to school? Think you need a week off but you don't want to spend hours waiting at the Polyclinic or spend time walking to any Clinic? Or you simply just can't be fucked. Fret Not! For Dick is here once again providing his services. Fool your teachers or employers with this fake medical certificate, guranteed* to WORK! ~Tested and Proved~ 
This week's Offer Buy 1 Get 1 Free! Send me a message if interested :D




Sunday, October 17, 2010

tax muney

If I was president,
I'd get elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday,
and buried on Sunday.
If I was president...
If I was president
Instead of spending billions on the war,
I can use that money, to feed the poor.
I know some so poor, when it rains that's when they shower,
when screaming "fight the power".
That's when the vulture devoured
If I was president,
I'd get elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday,
and buried on Sunday.

How can you refuse it, children of moses?
Tell the children the truth, the truth.
Christopher Columbus didn't discover America.
Tell them the truth.
The truth
YEAH! Tell them about Marcus Garvey.
Tell the children, the truth, yeah! The truth
Tell them about Martin Luther King.
Tell them the truth.
The Truth.
Tell them about JFK
If I was President
If I was president,
I'd get elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday,
and buried on Sunday.
If I was president...
If I was president 







Has it ever occured to you that the poor constantly blame the government for taxes?
Has it ever?
Oh wait it's not jus the poor. It's the rich too.
So wait... Without Taxes we'd all be happier?
Right! Then where's the government going to get the money to do what they do?
Print More Money! But... if we do that we're going to end up with Inflation. Not just normal Inflation
Not the Inflation that's good for the economy, the one that provides people with job opportunities.
We're talking about hyper-inflation, the one where our currency becomes useless. Oh Damn it how useless u ask? Well as useless as the Zimbabwe Currency, There is no value in the money! No value at all, everything's traded in gold. Where notes are used to contain tiny gold fragments which are traded for bread, clean water and food. Notes that are ignored by the traders. Notes that no one will ever wish to have in large amounts, fancy wishing for a billion zimbabwe money?
So... ask yourself...
Taxes? Are they really a menace to society or are they necessary for growth?
So think twice when you whine about paying your taxes. 
Cus taxes is good.
Taxes is food.
Taxes is not for people fwum tha hood.